New Texts Out Now: Alia Malek, The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria

New Texts Out Now: Alia Malek, The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria

New Texts Out Now: Alia Malek, The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria

By : Alia Malek

Alia Malek, The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria. New York City: Nation Books, 2017.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Alia Malek (AM): I’ve always wanted the opportunity to dive into my family’s history, specifically that of my great-grandfather and my grandmother, in order to better understand their lives against the backdrop of Syrian history. At the same time–like so many others–I have become increasingly distressed with what has happened in Syria (and what has been happening throughout the course of my life; I was born shortly after Hafez al Assad came to power). That distress has only been exacerbated by the way Syria is covered today in the press, and what it has become in the popular (and uninformed) western imagination–namely a place of intractable civil war, home to a seemingly agency-less and two-dimensional people, a base for savage extremists. As with all of my writings, I’m trying to provide a much more in-depth, nuanced, accurate portrayal of the people and lives behind the headlines. I use narrative devices to try to break through people’s numbness to coverage of Syria.

J:  What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

AM: This covers modern Syria, from the last of the Ottoman days to the present. It weaves the lives of my family members with the geopolitical and economic history of Syria, as a way to make these themes accessible and relatable, especially to an uninitiated reader. It begins with my great-grandfather from Hama who was born an Ottoman subject in 1889 and died a citizen of a Syria the same month that Hafez al Assad seized control of it in 1970. It then features my grandmother who moves to Damascus as a new bride in the early days of Syria’s independence and the world she creates in a multi-family apartment building in the capital, with neighbors of all stripes. Their lives make intimate for the reader the social and political realities of the decades leading up to Assad rule, including all the coups and the UAR. My mother’s life then takes over; she came of age in the Ba‘thist revolution of 1963, and the 1967 war with Israel and then emigrates to the US. Lastly, I moved to Damascus in April 2011 to reclaim and restore the same house my grandmother moved to all those years before, and I recount the events I witnessed as a journalist over the next two years. This allows me to also follow Syria’s disintegration to the refugee camps, competing homelands, and then Europe.

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

AM: It uses the same devices and approach I’ve used in the past – namely: journalism rooted in avid consumption of the academic work on the same topics/themes; narrative storytelling; and the intimate lives of real people so that the reader can experience major or faraway events in the skin of those implicated. It’s a major departure in that I’ve abandoned the third person in many ways and used my own family’s intimate lives for this. It meant of course having to look at relatives with the same skeptical and empathic eye I would apply to strangers.

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

AM: I wanted the book to be accessible to people coming to the subject with little or no prior experience or knowledge while at the same time not insulting the intelligence of those who are experts. I want people whose life experience seems to have no overlap with Syria to read this book and feel like it’s not so foreign after all, and to feel like it’s a place that deserves our attention, that we should not allow any more destruction. I also want teachers and professors to assign it so that what they are teaching comes to life in their students’ imaginations. I’d also hope that those in power would read it and see that Syrians deserve a considered approach to ending the conflict, not just tactics that add flame to fire.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

AM: While working on this book in 2015-2016, I also began reporting on the mass migration of Syrians across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. In the fall of 2015, I went on the so-called “refugee trail” – following the same group of unrelated Syrians who shared a raft as they made their way from Bodrum in Turkey, to Germany, Sweden, and Holland. I’ve gone back to Europe to see them and continue my reporting, going both six months after they arrived, and one year later.

 Excerpt from Chapter Eleven

PSYCHODRAME Damascus, August 2011

ONE SUNDAY DURING RAMADAN, MY YOUNGEST COUSIN, TALA, suggested I accompany her to see the Jesuits. She was sure I’d be interested in their psychodrame.

“What’s that?” I asked, unfamiliar with the French term and generally uninterested in anything church-related.

“A place to talk about fear,” she said.

I did a quick search online and found out that psychodrama (as it’s called in English) is a method of psychotherapy, often done in a group, that uses role-play and spontaneous dramatization to probe participants’ lives—their worries, anxieties, and any other issues.

Tala was right; I was super-intrigued. In Syria, very few people readily admit to needing mental health care, let alone seeking it, largely because, as in other societies, it carries a stigma. In the context of what was happening in Syria, where the collective anxiety, anger, and sadness was inextricably related to what was happening in the country, a public discussion seemed pretty bold, even subversive. Of course, the mukhabarat would know this was happening.

 […]

At the meeting, there were refreshments and conversation. Eventually, we were invited to take our seats, and I counted nearly 50. I found out later that the group was 60 percent Muslim and 40 percent Christian. There were in fact Sunnis, Druze, and Alawites there. Most people appeared to be in their thirties.

[…] Father Mazen, stood before us—without his vestments, only his collar identified him as clergy. In addition to being a priest, he was a psychotherapist and had studied in France. With Hala, another psychotherapist, they had started the psychodrama the month before to give people an opportunity to talk about their fears in the face of an impending unknown, where violence was already promising to play a big part.

Father Mazen began with some introductory remarks—reminding those gathered that we weren’t there to discuss politics, but rather people’s fears and feelings. That seemed impossible, but perhaps the disclaimer was an effort to persuade the informants present (surely they were there) of the innocence of the project. If the informants and mukhabarat were, as was said, not particularly sophisticated, I figured there was a chance the simple ruse might work.

Father Mazen then called for volunteers to start off the role-play, the main therapeutic vehicle of psychodrama. It was up to the participants to decide what form it should all take. Three men and three women volunteered, and they each took a chair in the circle at the front of the room. Anyone else who wanted to could join the circle at any point in time. They would have thirty minutes, at which point Father Mazen would tell them the time was up.

A man (Man 1) carrying worry beads in one hand began. He had a suggestion:

“We’ve been going around and around about who has been shot, who’s armed. Let’s instead talk about the opposite of fear—dreams. Let’s talk about our dreams for the future. What are our dreams?”

“How would we do that?” asked another man (Man 2). “What’s the scenario? The context for this conversation?”

“We could pretend we are being interviewed about our dreams,” Man 1 responded.

A woman (Woman 1) spoke up: “It’s hard for us to dream given what we are seeing. My biggest dream is for the killing to stop; I can’t dream past this.”

“Actually, before this [the conflict], I couldn’t talk about my dreams,” said Man 2.

Another woman (Woman 2) joined in: “Even if we are afraid to dream, we can close our eyes and imagine. It can help us escape.”

The last woman (Woman 3) added: “It’s relevant—we can talk about how we dream change to happen. Because change is frightening.”

But then Man 2 objected to the idea of an interview. It wouldn’t be a real conversation, he said. He looked to Father Mazen for guidance, but the priest did not interfere.

After some back and forth, they decided to pretend they were attendees of a conference for Syrians to discuss their dreams for the future.

Conferences in the Middle East—photographs of which are oddly in society and airline magazines—are often more about prepared presentations than free-flowing discussions. In Syria, they are also frequently held under the auspices of a ministry or the First Lady. It seemed the most stilted way to imagine how such a conversation could happen. I felt sad that they couldn’t come up with another, less official scenario where ordinary Syrians would be speaking openly about their dreams and hopes for the future.

“Then we need to represent different groups—the youth, the government, the revolution, civil society,” said Woman 1.

Man 1, not to be dissuaded by the rejection of his interview idea, made himself a sort of moderator. “Welcome to the conference,” he announced. “We’re going to talk about Syria’s future and what we most want to see in our country.”

“Can I begin?” asked Woman 3.

The moderator man nodded in encouragement.

“I’m keen to see how we teach change; that’s what’s killing us. There’s a military structure to our education—from how books are written to how questions are asked,” she said. “I want to destroy and rip apart the current books.”

“But there are some positive results in our education,” the conference moderator said. “Engineering, for example.”

“I think it starts from the mother-child relationship,” said Woman 2. “That’s the basis of society. I dream of paying more attention to our girls from the start. After all, they will become mothers and raise our children.”

“What you are talking about is making a cultured, enlightened society— that’s not just education,” said Man 2. “It’s in the upbringing.”

Then the woman who said she couldn’t dream past wanting the violence to end, Woman 1, decided to represent civil society. “Civil society needs to be stronger,” she said. “People start out wanting to do something for their country. But when we realize it’s for nothing, we stop thinking to try, to do. It does start from how we educate. You’re forbidden to exercise your mind, to think. If a child asks the teacher questions, he yells at you, shuts you up, and tells you just to memorize. Something starts from there, from when we are being told not to think, not to express what’s inside of us.”

The third man, Man 3, who had yet to speak, said, “I want to be like Europe in some way—advanced, with liberties and freedoms. But I also fear its bad sides, like their societal ills.”

Man 2 then announced he’d represent the regime, and I caught my breath.

He spoke at length. “Look at this society, the people. The taxi driver is a thief. The bureaucrat, the cop—they take bribes. We have an elite. These people can think and organize our lives, tell us what our dreams are. You, don’t bother yourselves with your dreams, we will organize your dreams for you. Otherwise, with this guy and his dream from here, this other guy from there, there will be chaos. The people [Syrians] are incapable; their thoughts and feelings are not good—”

Woman 3 interrupted him: “How can we know who these elite are?”

He ignored her: “—with the international conspiracy against Syria and the armed groups—they will get the advantage.”

I had heard this before, of course. The insinuation from members of the regime that they were the best Syria could do—because otherwise the masses, unsophisticated as they were, would ruin the country—was an integral basis of its power and Syrians’ acquiescence to them. It was built on an idea that Syrians needed to fear other Syrians. Because points of national dialogue were heavily monitored, and because geography and class kept Syrians from each other, no one would ever really know where reality stood exactly. And in that vacuum, the regime continued to play on such fears.

“Why are there weapons if all they want is reform?” the role-playing government man asked, echoing the constant rhetoric of state channels. Then, tongue-in-cheek, he said, “You want reforms? We’ve been talking about reforms for thirty years, so obviously we have no problem with reforms.”

Everyone began to laugh, and someone shouted that it had been forty years.

“We’re ready for more reforms,” he continued. “We’ll give you more banks and Internet, but not too much, because then the bad ideas will get in and there will be chaos, people will attack each other. Western ideas will get in, and then, there is the CIA, the Mossad. The Saudis hate us, the Turks hate us, half of Lebanon hates us, three-quarters of Iraq does, and all the rest. It’s a really big conspiracy.”

There was more laughter at the easily recognizable and almost spot-on mimicking of the regime.

He continued, “If you want to dream . . . I want to dream with you. But without you dreaming. That’s the way. Do you know another way? If there’s something wrong we can change it—education system, politics, economy.”

Even though it was an absurd statement, Woman 2 engaged him: “Yes, but who gets to decide what’s wrong?”

He waved her off easily—his script was ready made, so loud and unchallenged was the regime’s messaging in Syria.

[Excerpted from The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria, by Alia Malek (c) 2017, by permission of the author.]

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New Texts Out Now: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein, guest eds. "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis." Special Issue of Conflict, Security & Development

Conflict, Security and Development, Volume 15, No. 5 (December 2015) Special issue: "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis," Guest Editors: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you compile this volume?

Mandy Turner (MT): Both the peace process and the two-state solution are dead. Despite more than twenty years of negotiations, Israel’s occupation, colonization and repression continue–and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace.

This is not news, nor is it surprising to any keen observer of the situation. But what is surprising–and thus requires explanation – is the resilience of the Oslo framework and paradigm: both objectively and subjectively. It operates objectively as a straitjacket by trapping Palestinians in economic and security arrangements that are designed to ensure stabilization and will not to lead to sovereignty or a just and sustainable solution. And it operates subjectively as a straitjacket by shutting out discussion of alternative ways of understanding the situation and ways out of the impasse. The persistence of this framework that is focused on conflict management and stabilization, is good for Israel but bad for Palestinians.

The Oslo peace paradigm–of a track-one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution–is therefore in crisis. And yet it is entirely possible that the current situation could continue for a while longer–particularly given the endorsement and support it enjoys from the major Western donors and the “international community,” as well as the fact that there has been no attempt to develop an alternative. The immediate short-term future is therefore bleak.

Guided by these observations, this special issue sought to undertake two tasks. The first task was to analyze the perceptions underpinning the Oslo framework and paradigm as well as some of the transformations instituted by its implementation: why is it so resilient, what has it created? The second task, which follows on from the first, was then to ask: how can we reframe our understanding of what is happening, what are some potential alternatives, and who is arguing and mobilizing for them?

These questions and themes grew out of a number of conversations with early-career scholars – some based at the Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, and some based in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere. These conversations led to two interlinked panels at the International Studies Association annual convention in Toronto, Canada, in March 2014. To have two panels accepted on “conflict transformation and resistance in Palestine” at such a conventional international relations conference with (at the time unknown) early-career scholars is no mean feat. The large and engaged audience we received at these panels – with some very established names coming along (one of whom contributed to this special issue) – convinced us that this new stream of scholars and scholarship should have an outlet.  

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures do the articles address?

MT: The first half of the special issue analyzes how certain problematic assumptions shaped the Oslo framework, and how the Oslo framework in turn shaped the political, economic and territorial landscape.

Virginia Tilley’s article focuses on the paradigm of conflict resolution upon which the Oslo Accords were based, and calls for a re-evaluation of what she argues are the two interlinked central principles underpinning its worldview: internationally accepted notions of Israeli sovereignty; and the internationally accepted idea that the “conflict” is essentially one between two peoples–the “Palestinian people” and the “Jewish people”. Through her critical interrogation of these two “common sense” principles, Tilley proposes that the “conflict” be reinterpreted as an example of settler colonialism, and, as a result of this, recommends an alternative conflict resolution model based on a paradigm shift away from an ethno-nationalist division of the polity towards a civic model of the nation.

Tariq Dana unpacks another central plank of the Oslo paradigm–that of promoting economic relations between Israel and the OPT. He analyses this through the prism of “economic peace” (particularly the recent revival of theories of “capitalist peace”), whose underlying assumptions are predicated on the perceived superiority of economic approaches over political approaches to resolving conflict. Dana argues that there is a symbiosis between Israeli strategies of “economic peace” and recent Palestinian “statebuilding strategies” (referred to as Fayyadism), and that both operate as a form of pacification and control because economic cooperation leaves the colonial relationship unchallenged.

The political landscape in the OPT has been transformed by the Oslo paradigm, particularly by the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Alaa Tartir therefore analyses the basis, agenda and trajectory of the PA, particularly its post-2007 state building strategy. By focusing on the issue of local legitimacy and accountability, and based on fieldwork in two sites in the occupied West Bank (Balata and Jenin refugee camps), Tartir concludes that the main impact of the creation of the PA on ordinary people’s lives has been the strengthening of authoritarian control and the hijacking of any meaningful visions of Palestinian liberation.

The origin of the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the focus of Tareq Baconi’s article. He charts how Hamas’s initial opposition to the Oslo Accords and the PA was transformed over time, leading to its participation (and success) in the 2006 legislative elections. Baconi argues that it was the perceived demise of the peace process following the collapse of the Camp David discussions that facilitated this change. But this set Hamas on a collision course with Israel and the international community, which ultimately led to the conflict between Hamas and Fateh, and the administrative division, which continues to exist.

The special issue thereafter focuses, in the second section, on alternatives and resistance to Oslo’s transformations.

Cherine Hussein’s article charts the re-emergence of the single-state idea in opposition to the processes of separation unleashed ideologically and practically that were codified in the Oslo Accords. Analysing it as both a movement of resistance and as a political alternative to Oslo, while recognizing that it is currently largely a movement of intellectuals (particularly of diaspora Palestinians and Israelis), Hussein takes seriously its claim to be a more just and liberating alternative to the two-state solution.

My article highlights the work of a small but dedicated group of anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli activists involved in two groups: Zochrot and Boycott from Within. Both groups emerged in the post-Second Intifada period, which was marked by deep disillusionment with the Oslo paradigm. This article unpacks the alternative – albeit marginalized – analysis, solution and route to peace proposed by these groups through the application of three concepts: hegemony, counter-hegemony and praxis. The solution, argue the activists, lies in Israel-Palestine going through a process of de-Zionization and decolonization, and the process of achieving this lies in actions in solidarity with Palestinians.

This type of solidarity action is the focus of the final article by Suzanne Morrison, who analyses the “We Divest” campaign, which is the largest divestment campaign in the US and forms part of the wider Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Through attention to their activities and language, Morrison shows how “We Divest”, with its networked, decentralized, grassroots and horizontal structure, represents a new way of challenging Israel’s occupation and the suppression of Palestinian rights.

The two parts of the special issue are symbiotic: the critique and alternative perspectives analyzed in part two are responses to the issues and problems identified in part one.

J: How does this volume connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

MT: My work focuses on the political economy of donor intervention (which falls under the rubric of “peacebuilding”) in the OPT, particularly a critique of the Oslo peace paradigm and framework. This is a product of my broader conceptual and historical interest in the sociology of intervention as a method of capitalist expansion and imperial control (as explored in “The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace”, co-edited with Florian Kuhn, Routledge, 2016), and how post-conflict peacebuilding and development agendas are part of this (as explored in “Whose Peace: Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding”, co-edited with Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper (PalgraveMacmillan, 2008).  

My first book on Palestine (co-edited with Omar Shweiki), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy: De-development and Beyond (PalgraveMacmillan, 2014), was a collection of essays by experts in their field, of the political-economic experience of different sections of the Palestinian community. The book, however, aimed to reunite these individual experiences into one historical political-economy narrative of a people experiencing a common theme of dispossession, disenfranchisement and disarticulation. It was guided by the desire to critically assess the utility of the concept of de-development to different sectors and issues–and had a foreword by Sara Roy, the scholar who coined the term, and who was involved in the workshop from which the book emerged.

This co-edited special issue (with Cherine Hussein, who, at the time of the issue construction, was the deputy director of the Kenyon Institute) was therefore the next logical step in my research on Palestine, although my article on Jewish-Israeli anti-Zionists did constitute a slight departure from my usual focus.

J: Who do you hope will read this volume, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

MT: I would imagine the main audience will be those whose research and political interests lie in Palestine Studies. It is difficult, given the structure of academic publishing – which has become ever more corporate and money grabbing – for research outputs such as this to be accessed by the general public. Only those with access to academic libraries are sure to be able to read it – and this is a travesty, in my opinion. To counteract this commodification of knowledge, we should all provide free access to our outputs through online open source websites such as academia.edu, etc. If academic research is going to have an impact beyond merely providing more material for teaching and background reading for yet more research (which is inaccessible to the general public) then this is essential. Websites such as Jadaliyya are therefore incredibly important.

Having said all that, I am under no illusions about the potential for ANY research on Israel-Palestine to contribute to changing the dynamics of the situation. However, as a collection of excellent analyses conducted by mostly early-career scholars in the field of Palestine studies, I am hopeful that their interesting and new perspectives will be read and digested. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MT: I am currently working on an edited volume provisionally entitled From the River to the Sea: Disintegration, Reintegration and Domination in Israel and Palestine. This book is the culmination of a two-year research project funded by the British Academy, which analyzed the impacts of the past twenty years of the Oslo peace framework and paradigm as processes of disintegration, reintegration and domination – and how they have created a new socio-economic and political landscape, which requires new agendas and frameworks. I am also working on a new research project with Tariq Dana at Birzeit University on capital and class in the occupied West Bank.

Excerpt from the Editor’s Note 

[Note: This issue was published in Dec. 2015]

Initially perceived to have inaugurated a new era of hope in the search for peace and justice in Palestine-Israel, the Oslo peace paradigm of a track one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution is in crisis today, if not completely at an end.

While the major Western donors and the ‘international community’ continue to publicly endorse the Oslo peace paradigm, Israeli and Palestinian political elites have both stepped away from it. The Israeli government has adopted what appears to be an outright rejection of the internationally-accepted end-goal of negotiations, i.e. the emergence of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. In March 2015, in the final days of his re-election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is regarded as illegal under international law. Reminding its inhabitants that it was him and his Likud government that had established the settlement in 1997 as part of the Israeli state’s vision of a unified indivisible Jerusalem, he promised to expand the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem if re-elected. And in an interview with Israeli news site, NRG, Netanyahu vowed that the prospects of a Palestinian state were non-existent as long as he remained in office. Holding on to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), he argued, was necessary to ensure Israel’s security in the context of regional instability and Islamic extremism. It is widely acknowledged that Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israel’s security—against both external and internal enemies—gave him a surprise win in an election he was widely expected to lose.

Despite attempts to backtrack under recognition that the US and European states are critical of this turn in official Israeli state policy, Netanyahu’s promise to bury the two-state solution in favour of a policy of further annexation has become the Israeli government’s official intent, and has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading ministers and key advisers.

[…]

The Palestinian Authority (PA) based in the West Bank also appears to have rejected a key principle of the Oslo peace paradigm—that of bilateral negotiations under the supervision of the US. Despite a herculean effort by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to bring the two parties to the negotiating table, in response to the lack of movement towards final status issues and continued settlement expansion (amongst other issues), the Palestinian political elite have withdrawn from negotiations and resumed attempts to ‘internationalise the struggle’ by seeking membership of international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), and signing international treaties such as the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. This change of direction is part of a rethink in the PA and PLO’s strategy rooted in wider discussions and debates. The publication of a document by the Palestine Strategy Study Group (PSSG) in August 2008, the production of which involved many members of the Palestinian political elite (and whose recommendations were studiously discussed at the highest levels of the PA and PLO), showed widespread discontent with the bilateral negotiations framework and suggested ways in which Palestinians could ‘regain the initiative’.

[…]

And yet despite these changes in official Palestinian and Israeli political strategies that signal a deepening of the crisis, donors and the ‘international community’ are reluctant to accept the failure of the Oslo peace paradigm. This political myopia has meant the persistence of a framework that is increasingly divorced from the possibility of a just and sustainable peace. It is also acting as an ideological straitjacket by shutting out alternative interpretations. This special issue seeks a way out of this political and intellectual dead end. In pursuit of this, our various contributions undertake what we regard to be two key tasks: first, to critically analyse the perceptions underpinning the Oslo paradigm and the transformations instituted by its implementation; and second, to assess some alternative ways of understanding the situation rooted in new strategies of resistance that have emerged in the context of these transformations in the post-Oslo landscape.

[…]

Taken as a whole, the articles in this special issue aim to ignite conversations on the conflict that are not based within abstracted debates that centre upon the peace process itself—but that begin from within the realities and geographies of both the continually transforming land of Palestine-Israel and the voices, struggles, worldviews and imaginings of the future of the people who presently inhabit it. For it is by highlighting these transformations, and from within these points of beginning, that we believe more hopeful pathways for alternative ways forward can be collectively imagined, articulated, debated and built.